Best photos of 2021 - landscapes and nature

 

It's well into the new year but I only just finished with editing my 'best of' 2021photos.  Like every year I went back through my iPhoto library and picked out all the decent photos (click here and here for last 2 years).  This year I ended up with 650 photos, and so began the hard part.  This year I sorted all the photos by rough categories - people, family, snow and skiing, landscapes, and close ups and nature.  Then in each of those categories I weeded them down to just the 20 best photos.  This was hard!  Then I re-combined all the photos and edited it down to just 45 photos - this was harder!

Every year it seems to have gotten harder and harder to pick out just the best photos.  I used to winnow my favorites down to just 10 photos.  I just don't seem to be able to do this anymore.  With my final 45 I re broke them up into categories - winter/snow/frost, people and family, landscapes and nature.  And these are the content of the 3 'best photos of 2021'.  This is the first of the three.

This year just like last year I took a bunch of close up plant and flower pictures.  And just like last year very few of them made the final cut.  They all just seemed too cliche.  A lot of the landscapes looked cliche too - I have taken pictures of the same landscapes too many times!  Anyway, it was hard to pick out the photos that are both good and also somewhat unique.  

And here are my favorite landscape and nature pictures!

I like this one because the seagulls look like they are singing